A Brief Guide to Star Trek

someone there when they arrived (alien or human) otherwise there was no drama . . . The civilisations discovered far out in space would also often reflect those on Earth (whether it be Romans, Greeks, Chicago gangsters or Nazis) in order that viewers could relate. In his original 1964 pitch document, Roddenberry had called this the ‘parallel worlds concept. It means simply that our stories deal with planets and animal life, plus people, quite similar tothat on Earth. Social evolution will also have interesting points of similarity with ours. There will be differences, of course, ranging from the subtle to the boldly dramatic, out of which comes much of our colour and excitement. The “parallel worlds” concept makes production practical by permitting action-adventure science fiction at a practical budget figure via the use of available “Earth” casting, sets, locations, costuming, and so on . . . The “parallel worlds” concept tends to keep even the most imaginative stories within the general audience’s frame of reference.’ The truly alien would have a hard time holding the attention of a mid-1960s TV audience, or so executives and creatives alike believed. Roddenberry also had an ulterior motive for this propensity for Earth-like planets . . .
    From the very beginning
Star Trek
was about exploring ‘strange new worlds’, but as it turned out, the strangest world the series would explore was 1960s America. As with Rod Serling before him, Gene Roddenberry wanted his stories to mean something, to contain some kind of social or political commentary, but to evade the attentions of nervous commercial sponsors and network censors he found a way to disguise his social commentary in science fiction stories of far future worlds.
    Second only to Roddenberry in controlling the creative storytelling side of
Star Trek
was writer and story editor D. C. Fontana. She had briefly been Roddenberry’s secretary, but quickly became a writer on the new show, starting with the seventh episode of the first series, ‘Charlie X’. This was based on one of Roddenberry’s ‘springboard’ storylines titled ‘The Day Charlie Became God’. As with the second pilot, it was another story about a crewman attaining God-like powers. Fontana would go on to write several notable episodes of the series, but more importantly she quickly replaced the show’s initial story editor Steven W. Carabatsos in early 1967. She would go on to story-edit
The Animated Series
of 1973, contribute scripts to
The Next Generation
and
Deep Space Nine
, as well as various
Star Trek
spin-off projects, and co-write the post-
Star Trek
TV pilot
The Questor Tapes
(1974) with Roddenberry.
    Supporting Fontana on the creative story side was John D. F. Black. He was the executive story consultant on the series, hired by Roddenberry after he won a Writers Guild Award for an episode of the series
Mr. Novak
. His role was to supervise the various freelance writers, monitor their work and get their scripts in on time and in suitable shape for Roddenberry’s review. Although Black didn’t write much for the series itself (in fact he contributed only a single episode, ‘The Naked Time’ – and its follow-up on
The Next Generation
, ‘The Naked Now’), he was crucial in shaping other writers’ work.
    There was another Gene, writer–producer Gene L. Coon, who was a key authorial voice alongside Gene Roddenberry in the early codification of the
Star Trek
universe. Following the departure of John D. F. Black, who had difficulty dealing with Roddenberry’s constant rewriting, Coon became the key cre -ative force behind the development of
Star Trek
beyond Roddenberry’s original series concept, joining the series as producer after the initial thirteen episodes.
    Like Roddenberry, Coon was an accomplished TV writer mainly on episodic Western series like
Have Gun, Will Travel
,
Wagon Train
and
Rawhide
. Also like Roddenberry he’d served in the military during the war, although his experience came from the Pacific theatre. From the middle of the first season to the middle of the second, Coon brought a strong streak of moral thought to the drama, something that defined many of the best and best-remembered
Star Trek
episodes. Coon directly scripted twelve episodes in all, more than any other writer, and he closely influenced many more.
    During this period it was Coon, not Roddenberry, who created several key concepts, including many that survived well beyond
The